A few months ago I got the idea to create a reading queue based on anniversary. There were quite a few great books celebrating more or less significant birthdays in 2009.

Continuing the idea, here’s a list of possibilities to choose from for 2010, with the ordinal in parentheses. The list is skewed to 20th Century lit since I didn’t go farther back in my searching except for certain authors — there will be scads of additional selections available if you feel like looking around. Feel free to offer any other suggestions in the comments.

I’ll strike out those I get around to reading during the year.

• The Brothers Karamazov (130th) – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Rhinoceros (50th) – Eugene Ionesco
• The Town and the City (60th) – Jack Kerouac
• Immortality (20th) – Milan Kundera
• Devil in a Blue Dress (20th) – Walter Mosley
• Skinny Legs and All (20th) – Tom Robbins
• Cosmos (30th) – Carl Sagan
• The Bachelors (50th) – Muriel Spark
• The Ballad of Peckham Road (50th) – Muriel Spark
• The Snake’s Pass (120th) – Bram Stoker
• The Sleeper Awakes (100th) – H.G. Wells
• Jeeves in the Offing (50th) – P.G. Wodehouse

Complete:

• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (30th) – Douglas Adams
• I, Robot (60th) – Isaac Asimov
• The Handmaid’s Tale (25th) – Margaret Atwood
• Martian Chronicles (60th) – Ray Bradbury
• Ender’s Game (25th) – Orson Scott Card
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (10th) – Michael Chabon
• Farewell, My Lovely (70th) – Raymond Chandler
• The Sign of Four (120th) – Arthur Conan Doyle
• Baudolino (10th) – Umberto Eco
• The Name of the Rose (30th) – Umberto Eco
• LA Confidential (20th) – James Ellroy
• As I Lay Dying (80th) – William Faulkner
• Love in the Time of Cholera (25th) – Gabriel García Márquez
• The Difference Engine (20th) – William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
• The Marble Faun (150th) – Nathaniel Hawthorne
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (70th) – Ernest Hemingway
• The Cider House Rules (25th) – John Irving
• Tristessa (50th) – Jack Kerouac
• To Kill a Mockingbird (50th) – Harper Lee
• A Canticle for Leibowitz (50th) – Walter M. Miller
• Ringworld (40th) – Larry Niven
• The Violent Bear It Away (50th) – Flannery O’Connor
• Hemingway’s Chair (15th) – Michael Palin
• Good Omens (20th) – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
• Still Life with Woodpecker (30th) – Tom Robbins
• Contact (25th) – Carl Sagan
• Green Eggs and Ham (50th) – Dr. Seuss
• One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (50th) – Dr. Seuss
• Zeitgeist (10th) – Bruce Sterling
• The Artificial Kid (30th) – Bruce Sterling
• A Confederacy of Dunces (30th) – John Kennedy Toole
• The Accidental Tourist (25th) – Anne Tyler
• Hocus Pocus (20th) – Kurt Vonnegut
• The Age of Innocence (90th) – Edith Wharton
• Mrs. Dalloway (85th) – Virginia Woolf